Suchergebnisse

Two phases of a pilot scheme to supply LPG in the Nyarugusu refugee camp in 2017, and follow up research conducted by UNEP DTU Partnership, reveal a strong desire and willingness to pay (WTP) among refugee households for LPG as an alternative to traditional biomass for cooking. This reflects the relatively high financial and non-financial costs of woodfuel and charcoal use in the camp, which in turn is a function of the size and profile of the camp. Where there is a willingness to pay (WTP) for any given good or service, but where the market is constrained in meeting this demand (such as in a refugee camp), there is a need for an intervention to create a market. This market creation plan is the outcome of various discussions with key stakeholders which took place between November 2017 and January 2018, the full list is presented in section 7. It intends to give a clear picture of the opportunities and challenges, along with the different options available to developing a market for LPG in the Kigoma region. The aims and intended outcomes of the LPG market creation programme support the Tanzanian government's ambition to scale up the use of LPG across the nation. In the context of the refugee camps in Kigoma, it also addresses the GoT's aim to help reduce deforestation and conflict risk with the local communities surrounding the camps. It is also aligned with UNHCR's protection remit and with the emerging global framework of actions to supply clean, sustainable and affordable energy for displaced people, as part of global efforts to deliver on SDG7. Following comments and feedback provided by the UNHCR, a shorter concept note will be developed, targeted at funding agencies and donors.

Despite decades of international political emphasis, little is known about the in-country determinants of technology transfer for climate change mitigation. We draw upon the conclusions of a series of standardised, official governmental statements of technology priorities, coupled with questionnaire-based data collection, to shed light on the nature of those determinants. We find that there is a disconnect between what developing country governments perceive as the key enablers of, and barriers to, technology transfer, and what bilateral and multilateral technology transfer programmes can offer, given budgetary constraints and the logic of development aid spending. We show that the well-established notion of making climate change mitigation actions an integral part of sound development plans is especially relevant for technology transfer. We offer pointers as to how this might be done in practice, in the context of the 'technology action plans' developed as part of the United Nations-sponsored technology needs assessment process.

This guidebook provides an introduction to designing government-led interventions to scale up investment in solar water heater (SWH) markets, showing how these interventions can be packaged as Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAS). Reflecting the changing balance in global greenhouse gas emissions, NAMAs embody the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. In addition to developed countries' commitments to make quantitative reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, developing countries are invited to contribute with voluntary actions that are 'nationally appropriate' deviations from 'business as usual' emissions scenarios. Such deviations may be captured in low-carbon (or low-emission) development strategies, and then implemented as NAMAs.

This report presents the findings of research into the main outcomes of government and donor-backed efforts to promote small and medium-sized energy businesses (energy SMEs) in sub-Saharan Africa. The research follows an outcome analysis methodology. The focus is on four countries: Ghana, Senegal, Tanzania and Zambia and primarily on UNEP's AREED programme (2002-2012). This research focuses on the 'contributing factors' – a deliberately broader term that incorporates the internal 'success factors' – for energy SMEs, about which much has already been written. Indeed, the research findings presented in this report reaffirm most of what has been concluded in previous studies, including Kolominskas (2003); Mehlwana (2003); Denton (2006) and Napier-Moore (2006). These studies identified the lack of access to affordable finance as the being the predominant, persistent, barrier to establishing and scaling up a commercially viable energy SME sector, emphasising the lack of strong policy support from governments, poor business skills capacity and the high cost of many RETs as related cause-and-effect barriers. While these issues continue to characterise, to a greater or lesser extent, the energy SMEs sectors in the countries studied for this research, it is more relevant to revisit the main assumption behind AREED and other donor-backed programmes designed to promote energy SMEs. The assumption is that the solution to the aforementioned barriers would be overcome by a 'demonstration effect' whereby successful energy SMEs, supported by donor-backed programmes, influence the commercial financial sector to invest in energy SMEs, thus triggering a virtuous circle of growth and profitability. Experiences drawn from a decade of AREED support across four of the project countries reveal both the presence (Ghana, Senegal) and absence, or weak presence, of this demonstration effect (Tanzania, Zambia). This is a central question, and one which was not the focus of previous research, presumably because the answer was not fully apparent prior to 2006 when the last substantial work was conducted. Where there is an absence, or weak presence, of a demonstration effect a number of explanatory factors can be identified. These include, inter alia, the lack of an entrepreneurial culture; an SME 'dependency syndrome' perpetuated by grant-based support from governments and donor agencies; persistent shortcomings in business skills capacity; lack of clearly defined markets; demand-side barriers to purchase relatively high capital-intense energy products. Where numerous energy SMEs are in operation and thus where a valid demonstration effect can be identified, there is a perceived paradox that serves to undermine commercial interest in investing in energy SMEs. The paradox is that the donor-supported businesses that were issued with concessional and/or flexible loans serve to demonstrate that these businesses depend upon such concessional terms, i.e., that they could not survive in 'the real world'. While this assumption is widely regarded as self-evident by private investors, there are in fact other, more concrete, factors that act to undermine the demonstration effect. These include, inter alia, relatively high transaction costs of investing in SMEs; the inherently complicated nature of energy sector SMEs with longer supply chains and slower pay-back periods for capital-intensive technologies such as solar PV; rigid rules regarding the need to secure collateral. These factors can be understood as structural issues that conspire to increase the financial risk of investing in energy SMEs and thus are not the product of ignorance on the behalf of the banking sector. In the countries studied for this research, these factors are compounded by the high opportunity costs for banks where higher rates of return can be secured from investing in high-turnover businesses, for example those trading in high-volume, perishable goods. There is also a more general challenge faced by a range of SME entrepreneurs where such individuals and businesses are considered by banks to have an inherently higher risk profile, a factor which, to some extent, appears to be the product of 'anti-SME' discrimination, where investors favour larger corporate players operating under licence, often backed by strong branding, reputation and/or political connections. There is evidence that government in the countries studied is now more receptive to the concept of energy SMEs. For example, most governments have eased the burden of red tape that traditionally surrounded business registration in many African countries and some governments, such as Senegal, have set up government departments whose sole purpose is to support SMEs. However there is a predominant view among stakeholders, across the countries studied, that governments are ineffective in designing and implementing tangible support for energy SMEs, despite politicians often providing strong rhetorical support. As such the establishment and success of energy SMEs more often depends on support provided by donor agencies or NGOs that can provide technical assistance and/or subsidised loans. This point highlights an important status quo, and an issue that was itself one of the key rationales behind supporting energy SMEs in the first place, i.e., to by-pass government in efforts to supply sustainable energy technologies to low income consumers by supporting SMEs. However, early experience with the practical challenge of supporting energy SMEs led observers, including Denton (2006) and Napier-Moore (2006), to consider the role and importance of an 'enabling framework' necessary for energy SMEs to function and thrive. While this issue would appear to present itself as a chicken-and-egg dilemma, the research findings presented here from Senegal, and to a lesser extent with Ghana's LPG market, do suggest that conducive economic and regulatory conditions are a prerequisite for scaling up the commercial success of energy SMEs. At the same time, one of the well-understood success factors for specific energy SMEs is the head start given to relatively mature technologies that are reliable, easy to understand and suitable for local distribution, thus presenting a 'low-hanging fruit' opportunity for SMEs. LPG and fuel efficient cook stoves are the obvious technologies that have proven to be most commercially viable, and indeed the failure to conduct in-depth market testing for energy products and services has been a major cause of commercial failure for otherwise well organised and motivated SMEs. A major geographical outcome is that energy SMEs continue to mostly operate in, and supply, urban and peri-urban markets. As such, programmes (including AREED) that were originally intended to address the rural market, where traditional fuel use accounts for major social and environmental impacts, have largely failed. This is due to low levels of entrepreneurial capacity, higher transaction costs for supplying a dispersed rural market, and demand-side barriers for capital-intensive RETs. However this market focus is not unique to the energy sector and entrepreneurial talents and opportunities tend to dominate in urban areas, across all sectors.

Solar PV is gaining ground in low and middle-income countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where a change from donor to more market-driven investments has been observed. This article contributes to energy transition research in low-income countries, taking Rwanda as a case study and focusing on the factors that determined the implementation of what was the largest on-grid solar project, upon completion in 2014. The multi-level perspective (MLP) is used to structure our analysis of the various socio-technical levels, and their interaction, to better understand the conditions that are enabling this transition. Our analysis reveals the central importance of bureaucratic and regulatory support for investment in low-carbon energy technologies, within a political economy influenced by processes of neo-liberalisation, while creating significant space for private contract negotiation. In particular, the provision of legal and financial guarantees was crucial to reduce risk for foreign capital investment, revealing contradictory forces that both promoted market rule, while limiting private capital's exposure to competitive pressures. We also focus our analysis on the aspect of control and driving forces, in particular the role of development partners and private sector project champions.

This article presents an attempt to operationalize the concept of 'best practice', as applied to project-based interventions to expand energy access in developing countries. To this end a methodology has been developed to quantify project performance across five dimensions, each informed by three key indicators, and aggregate these into a composite indicator, using weights obtained from a survey of experts. The experience demonstrates the inherent limitations in developing a 'one-size-fits-all' methodology, revealing the implicit tension between the political desire to refer to objective, absolute, measures of best practice and highly contextual realities where baselines are often lacking. However, the methodology does offer a comparative means to highlight the relative strengths and weaknesses of any given project, enabling both ex-post assessments and project learning. The study features an analysis of cases selected from the Energy Access Knowledge Base, published by the Global Network on Energy for Sustainable Development (GNESD). Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Climate change is arguably the most significant of a set of interconnected global challenges threatening water resources and food security. In particular, the relationship between water resources, food systems and climate change is tightly coupled, and improved food security under climate change and climate variability scenarios requires globally coordinated actions for both technical and policy interventions to achieve greater resilience. Successful implementation of these actions requires a comprehensive scientific knowledge base delivered by extensive global collaboration, taking into account past and ongoing successful research and innovation initiatives. Diverse actors from all over the world—from corporations to governments and citizens—are increasingly recognising the urgent need to address climate change in their respective spheres of influence. This report is intended to contribute to making this process more effective by developing a proposition for a platform to strengthen Africa-EU research and innovation collaboration on climate change.

Low-carbon technologies must be widely adopted at a large scale to address climate change and enhance access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy. The uptake of those technologies is often supported by specific policies developed at a national or regional level and those policies, like the technologies themselves, can diffuse from one place to another. This paper sheds some light on this 'policy transfer' and investigates the dynamics, the actors and the processes involved. We illustrate what happens when renewable energy support policies in one country inspire renewable support policies in another country using three case studies in Peru, Thailand and Uganda as examples. Using an adapted version of the policy transfer framework first elaborated by Dolowitz and Marsh (Polit Stud 44:343–57, 1996; Governance 13:5–23, 2000), we describe the policy transfer process in the three case study countries according to several criteria. We find that policy transfer is not a straightforward process where a 'borrower' country simply adopts policies from a 'lender' country, but instead a complex process where many actors - national and international – interact to shape the outcome of the process. And while experiences particularly in the EU as well as international developments have influenced the policy transfer in case study countries significantly, domestic issues also play a key role in shaping the transferred policies and in adapting them to local contexts. Moreover, the policy transfer process is not an one-off event, but a continuous process where iterative learning helps the policies to evolve over time. Policy transfer is a complex matter, involving many stakeholders during a continuous process over time. The Dolowitz and Marsh framework proved useful to analyse policy transfer and the actors involved although questions for further research remain. For instance, against what kind of criteria should the 'success' of a policy transfer be measured? Moreover, while comparing three illustrative case studies is a first, useful step, having a larger set of case studies and data might enhance our understanding of the details of the processes involved even further.